The Predator

by Christopher Golden

  The lights flickered. He thought he saw a pattern in their sequence and tapped again.

  A series of 3D projections burst from the helmet, making Rory jump. They flashed by quickly, but Rory read them as instantly as they appeared, capturing every one of them in his mind, sorting them the way he sorted mechanics or the way he saw every move in a chess game—or five chess games—before the first few pieces had even been taken off the board.

  The projections were three-dimensional graphics of a spacecraft and its controls. Buttons, switches, gauges, star maps, a virtual-reality owner’s manual that whizzed by faster than any ordinary human brain could parse. The 3D image flickered to a view of the Earth, as seen from space, which Rory guessed was not something from the owner’s manual, but was either the view from the spacecraft right now or a recent recording. Something blinked red on the planet as the image zoomed in. Landmasses grew closer. North America; the southern United States; Mexico. Then the image became a map, landmarks getting bigger and clearer, as the tracker, or remote camera, or whatever, rushed closer and closer to the ground.

  The red blinking expanded into the outline of a specific image. He knew from the owner’s manual what it had to be, what its silhouette indicated it must be.

  Another spacecraft.

  Taking care with the doohickey, Rory got up and moved to the worktable, studying the hologram even more closely. He nodded in quiet understanding.

  There was something wrong with this ship. Its outline looked wrong—buckled.

  Instinctively he knew the reason why. This ship had not landed.

  It had crashed.

  * * *

  The Iron Horse Motel had laid out the red carpet. Motorcycles crammed the parking lot. Music played loudly. Dozens of bikers were milling about, swigging from bottles of beer and spirits, reacquainting themselves with old friends, bitching about old enemies. An air of festive camaraderie suffused the night, so much so that the handful of people staying at the Iron Horse who hadn’t come to town for the bike festival managed to find themselves mostly charmed by the crowds of bearded, tattooed men and leather-clad, tattooed women, instead of terrified.

  The motel’s marquee had been arranged to read: WELCOME RIDERS! CORPUS CHRISTI OR BUST! The M in WELCOME tilted slightly, but not so much that anyone bothered to fix it.

  Among the other motorcycles in the lot, the stolen Scouts did not go unnoticed, but those who did take note of their presence only admired them, perhaps envied their owners.

  In room 112, the television glowed brightly, the volume just loud enough to be heard over the commotion out in the motel’s parking lot. On the TV screen, a nervous-looking man was entering a suburban house, while a voiceover was saying, “…the forty-one-year-old came to this Texan home to meet our decoy, whom he believes to be an underage girl.”

  Cut back to the nervous-looking man, who is clearly surprised and alarmed to be encountered by Dateline journalist Chris Hansen.

  “And what are you up to today?” Hansen asked pointedly.

  The child predator tried desperately to look casual. “Nothin’. Just came by to hang out.”

  “I see you brought some condoms and some Mike’s Hard Lemonade,” Hansen said, his voice casual but his words damning as hell.

  Coyle and Baxley were sitting on the edge of the room’s only bed, their eyes fixed on the screen. However, the third occupant of the room, Dr. Casey Brackett, missed the pervert’s response, and indeed the entire encounter. Despite her attempt to fight it, the tranquilizer had done its work very effectively, and even now she was still snoring lightly, a candle of drool at the edge of her lips.

  * * *

  Out in the lot, Nettles stood guard over the stolen Scouts, but his focus had drifted to the nearby Winnebago Super Chief and the bearded redneck who had set up a table in front of it to sell guns and ammo, like he was running a kid’s lemonade stand. Some of the ordnance laid out on the table was state of the art, and it had Nettles thinking. Lynch might be good when it came to card tricks, but he himself was the true hustler of the group.

  The gun seller’s business had thinned out enough that the man wandered over toward Nettles and cast an appreciative glance at the motorcycles behind him. He actually licked his lips.

  “Those Custom Scouts? How much you want for ’em?” he asked.

  Nettles merely snickered, and the guy shrugged as if to say: Ah, well. Worth a try. Clearly, though, his curiosity wasn’t yet sated. “Where you boys headed, anyway?”

  “Bikefest,” Nettles replied. “You?”

  “Gainesville Gun Show.” He nodded to his guns, then jerked a thumb at the RV. “Anything you need, I got in the Super Chief. I’m not kidding. Anything.”

  Nettles’ ears perked up.

  * * *

  McKenna didn’t think he could have slept even if someone had hit him over the head with a sledgehammer. His whole body felt lit up, crackling with the electric need to move, to fight, to extricate himself from the most colossally fucked up scenario he’d ever encountered. If the woman hadn’t been tranquilized, there would have been no way he would have stopped here. Yes, they needed a plan, but he wanted to be far away from the base and the alien and the fucking spaceship that had shot down those F-22s before vanishing. Instead, here they were.

  The only upside of the Iron Horse Motel was the damn bikefest, which enabled them to hide in plain sight. Without all these motorcycles, they’d have had to ditch the Scouts— too recognizable—and steal a minivan or something. Still, he didn’t like this environment, not with the Loonies who had suddenly become his new platoon—temporarily, at least. Any one of these guys might be volatile enough to start trouble in a church on Christmas, but surrounded by a couple hundred bikers, all of whom perceived themselves as alpha males… it was guaranteed not to end well.

  McKenna exhaled and sidled over to where Nebraska sat on a brick wall, smoking a cigarette. “You, uh… think she’s safe in there with them?”

  Nebraska blew out a plume of smoke and gave him a disapproving look. “They’re soldiers. They’d fuck a woodpile on the off chance there’s a snake inside. But sleepy ladies? Nah.”

  Motion off to his left caught McKenna’s attention and he glanced over to see Nettles emerging from behind the motel sign, zipping up his pants.

  “Hey, Nettles,” Nebraska called, “there’s a toilet in the room, y’know.”

  Nettles widened his eyes in shock as if he’d just seen God. McKenna allowed himself a moment of amusement and then sat heavily on the brick wall beside Nebraska. A moment or two of quiet contemplation elapsed, but his anxiousness returned. He wanted to be elsewhere.

  To allay the jitters, he tried to divert himself with conversation. “Where’d you serve?” he asked Nebraska.

  Nebraska wasn’t overly chatty, but he had a laid-back attitude, and seemed happy to talk, which made him the most relaxing of the Loonies to be around.

  The big man took another pull on his cigarette, and said, “Operation Enduring Freedom, ’03. Went for the Taliban, stayed for the opium.” He blew smoke, smiling slightly. “Came back, tried for contract work. They wouldn’t take me. Tried to drive a bus…”

  “Lemme guess,” said McKenna. “They wouldn’t take you?”

  Nebraska slid him a look, still smiling. You got it, his expression said.

  For a moment they sat in companionable silence. Nebraska might have been laid-back, but he had a keen intelligence. There was a weariness about him too, as if he had been pushing at life too hard for too long.

  Weighing up the question in his mind, wondering whether he should ask it, McKenna decided to take the plunge. “So… the officer. Did he live?”

  “Excuse me?” Nebraska replied.

  “The CO—the asshole you shot. Did he live?”

  “Funny.” A small nod. “He did.”

  “Where is he now?” McKenna asked.

  Nebraska’s expression turned into something halfway between sadness and amusement. He studied McKenn
a’s face and cocked his head slightly, like a hopeful comedian waiting for a tiny audience to get his punchline. McKenna frowned, not understanding, and then he got it and his face went slack.

  “You’re shitting me.”

  Nebraska sighed and lifted up his hair to reveal a puckered pale scar on the dark skin beneath his hairline.

  He shrugged. “I missed.”

  McKenna blinked at him. “Why… why did you do that?”

  “Miss?”

  “Shoot yourself.”

  “The doctors keep asking me that.” Nebraska took another drag on his cigarette. “I walked to the hospital with a bullet in my head. It’s why I’m… y’know…” He waffled his hand in the air. “Fuzzy sometimes.”

  McKenna felt a chill trickle down his spine. He cleared his throat. “Should I be worried?”

  “Probably,” Nebraska replied grimly. He stood up, tossing the butt of his cigarette to one side, then tapped at his scar with a smile and pointed to Heaven. “God wouldn’t take me neither.”

  McKenna expected him to walk away, but Nebraska stood for a moment, contemplating his new friend, as if debating whether to reveal more devastating truths. Finally, he seemed to decide, but what he said surprised McKenna—surprised him and moved him.

  “I got your back, Chief.”

  * * *

  The constant noise in the lot had been getting to Nettles, and now the sound of a biker noisily revving his engine only a few feet away managed to fray his last few nerves.

  Scowling, he said, “You mind keeping it down?”

  The biker shot him an incredulous look. “You gonna make me, fairy boy?”

  Nettles jumped to his feet and started toward him. “Am I gonna make you Fairy Boy? How would that work? Do I, like, give you powers? A wand? I’m confused.”

  The biker strode to meet him, full of rage and swagger and a history that doubtless included a hundred such encounters, all of them ending the same way. Nettles relished that moment, the instant when the guy’s confidence suffused him the way all the best emotions did—love, fury… humiliation.

  Nettles shot out a hand with such fluidity that anyone looking on would have seen the motion as almost casual. The biker wouldn’t have agreed—not when he staggered, gasping, and crumpled to the ground.

  * * *

  Standing in front of a vending machine, McKenna saw the exchange and shook his head. Great. Just fucking great. What did these guys not understand about the need to keep a low profile? He banged the machine with his fist. Bizarrely, and without warning, a paper cup dropped down and started filling with coffee. McKenna stared at the cup a moment—he hadn’t put any money in yet—and decided to take this as a good omen.

  Nettles could take care of himself, right?

  He sure as hell hoped so.

  Nebraska walked by, headed for the motel room, and with a last glance toward Nettles, McKenna followed. Nebraska knocked at the door, a prearranged signal of two short, three long knocks, and Coyle yanked it open almost immediately.

  “Good timing,” Coyle said, glancing from Nebraska to McKenna before he stepped back to let them in.

  McKenna understood his urgency the moment they entered. On the bed, the woman had turned over and seemed to be stirring. Baxley and Lynch were gathered by the bed of their sleeping Snow White with the air of expectant fathers. She stirred again, moaned a bit, and Nebraska moved in as well. He held up his hands as if she were already awake, like she might try to bolt and he wanted to calm her before she hurt herself.

  “Easy,” Nebraska told the others. “She’s gonna open her eyes, buncha motherfuckers hovering, she might be coming in hot.”

  “Got it,” Coyle said, nodding anxiously, eyes even crazier than usual. “Chill.”

  McKenna frowned as he noticed a dinner tray on a stand that had been set up next to the bed. A tiny cup of coffee, a troll doll, a postcard, a drawing of a shopping cart, a foil unicorn. Like offerings to the God of Idiots.

  “What is this shit, exactly?” McKenna asked.

  Baxley looked sheepish. “We wanted to make her feel comfortable. When she wakes up. The postcard’s from me, the unicorn’s from Nettles—”

  McKenna raised a hand to cut him off, nodding as if Baxley’s explanation actually made sense. In a way, he guessed, it did. The Loonies were like some Dr. Moreau combination of children and feral cats, wild but aware of the weird allure of domesticity.

  * * *

  Casey moaned softly as she clawed her way back to the surface of the deep black pool into which she’d fallen. The dead time between the tranquilizer taking effect and her return to consciousness seemed like both an instant and an eternity. She tried to open her eyes for what seemed like the hundredth time, and this time managed it, light suddenly flooding in between her lids.

  “Mornin’, sunshine,” said a voice.

  That’s not my name, she thought groggily. But when she tried to communicate the fact, it came out as: “I wish people’d stop calling me that.”

  All at once, it occurred to her to wonder who had spoken. The last time she had heard a human voice it had come from a man who was about to kill her. The adrenaline that flooded through her at the memory enabled her to open her eyes wide, to half sit up. She saw faces. Men’s faces. They didn’t look like doctors. In fact, each of them looked crazy in one way or another.

  Her gaze shifted instinctively to her left, looking for an escape route. She didn’t spot one immediately, but what she did spot was almost as good. Bounding out of bed, she grabbed the Remington shotgun, which was propped against a chair beside the bed, on which sat a tray piled with various bits of junk—a troll doll, a foil unicorn, other stuff. Whirling round, she leveled the gun shakily at the group of men. Her eyes were wide and her breath came in ragged sips as she studied them, maybe trying to decide who to shoot first if anyone made a move.

  The men didn’t look scared. In fact, they looked impressed by her moves—and in her present befuddled state that confused her a little. One of the men—sandy hair, handsome, maybe the least crazy looking of the bunch—stepped forward, his hands raised to show he was unarmed.

  “Relax,” he said soothingly. “We’re the good guys.”

  She sneered at him. Backing away, she fumbled in her pants pocket while still trying to keep the shotgun pointed in their vicinity, then started to look panicked. Frantically she patted her other pockets.

  “Looking for this?” asked the handsome guy mildly.

  She glanced up. He was holding the pulverized remains of her cell phone in his hand, an expression of apology on his face.

  Before she could speak, he said, “They know who you are, lady. And they can trace phones.”

  Casey gaped at him. “Are you insane?”

  The men—all except for the handsome guy—seemed to take her question literally. They shuffled embarrassedly and started casting glances at each other. Some shrugged, others raised their eyebrows.

  One of them said, “Maybe.”

  “A little,” amended a scruffy guy in a baseball cap, holding his thumb and forefinger an inch apart to demonstrate.

  Yet another of the men, a tall, bald, bearded guy, stared into space and murmured, “I dunno… probably.”

  Casey narrowed her eyes, clearly uncertain whether they were making fun of her or not.

  One thing she was certain of, though, was that fearsome as these men looked, they meant her no harm. If they had, she was sure she’d have known about it by now. Indeed, now that she really thought about it, the most likely scenario was that they’d rescued her from the Project: Stargazer compound and had been protecting her ever since.

  Unless, of course, they were desperate prisoners and she was their hostage. But again, that didn’t really ring true. Their body language was wrong for a start.

  Deciding to test her theory, she leaned the Remington against the wall and made for the door. She was reaching for the handle when the handsome guy barked, “They were gonna put a bullet in your head back
there.”

  Now Casey stopped and glanced back at him, torn by indecision. She’d already guessed the reason for her ex-employers’ sudden change of attitude toward her: it was either because she’d seen too much, or because of the vial she’d taken. But, ever the scientist, she couldn’t help wondering how these guys fit into the equation, and what they knew that she didn’t. She cocked an eyebrow, and the handsome guy said, “You’re expendable. Just like the rest of us.”

  She breathed out slowly, glancing around at the motley crew. She couldn’t help thinking she knew the handsome guy from somewhere, but she couldn’t think where. “Expendables?” she said wryly. “More like the Seven fucking Dwarfs.”

  The guy with the baseball cap grinned bashfully. Casey sighed in surrender to the insanity, grabbed her pack, which was leaning against the closet door, moved across to a plastic chair, and flopped down into it.

  “Don’t you guys have… someplace to be?” she asked.

  One of the men—goatee beard, bare arms covered in tattoos—shrugged and said, “VA Psych Ward? Military prison?”

  Casey almost laughed. For some reason, his response— or the way he had delivered it—relaxed rather than alarmed her.

  “Can I borrow a phone at least? I need someone to feed my dogs.” When all she got in response was shrugs and grimaces of apology, she fished a tiny bottle out of her pack and took a swig, then focused on the handsome man, as it suddenly came to her where she had seen his face before. “I read the file. Those men it killed… Yours?”

  The guy nodded.

  McKenna, Casey thought, remembering. His name is McKenna.

  “They’re gonna need a patsy for that,” she said.

  “You’re looking at him.”

  “Yeah. I figured. Textbook fall guy. Psycho ex-sniper, PTSD, divorced… has even got a flaky kid who curls up in a ball. It’s perfect—”

  McKenna’s eyes blazed with fury. He felt himself flush, felt the desire to lash out. Instead, he glared at her, silently warning her.